The former number 2 of LR Virginie Calmels announced this Tuesday to the newspaper Le Figaro her candidacy for the presidency of the party, in a “balanced” line and “at the epicenter of the different currents of LR”.
“I am running for the Republican presidency” because “I am not resigned to seeing LR lose in a row and continue to shrink without a clear line,” she says, pleading “to reconnect with the disappointed LR.”
At the moment, only Éric Ciotti is a candidate for the presidency of the Republicans scheduled for early December.
“The great weakness of macronism is the sovereign”
In defense of a right “equidistant from Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen” and that “associates freedom and the restoration of sovereignty”, Virginie Calmels, 51, advocated “giving ‘wings and air to LR'”. “I do not believe in exclusionary lines, neither statist and sovereignist, nor too conservative, nor anti-liberal, which will end up losing right-wing voters,” she adds.
Very critical of President Emmanuel Macron, whose “at the same time” shows its limits on a daily basis”, she also believes that “the great weakness of macronism is the sovereign”.
Representative of the liberal sensibility within LR, Virginie Calmels had been fired in June 2018 by Laurent Wauquiez, then head of the party, and in open conflict with her number 2. She had in particular criticized an LR pamphlet entitled “Pour que la France rests France”, distributed during a mobilization operation, which she had described as “anxiogenic”.
The list of candidates fixed at the beginning of October
Republicans will elect their next president on December 3-4 (possibly with a runoff on December 10-11), succeeding Christian Jacob, whose interim is provided by Annie Genevard. The deputy for Doubs has made it known that she is thinking of starting a business, and many are betting on a candidacy for number 3 of the Aurélien Pradié party, with a social line.
Prospective applicants have until October 3 to submit sponsorships. Former assistant to Alain Juppé in Bordeaux, Virginie Calmels joined Laurent Wauquiez in the summer of 2017, during his campaign for the party’s presidency.
A graduate of the Toulouse Business School and the European Institute of Business Administration (Insead), former CEO of Endemol Monde, Virginie Calmels joined the Barnes luxury real estate group in 2019 and launched a digital school in 2020.
Source: BFM TV
